


The Beautiful Letdown

by mormorando (shine)



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-16
Updated: 2008-07-16
Packaged: 2017-10-28 05:44:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/304378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shine/pseuds/mormorando
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes a second for Niou to realize that his heart is beating <i>yell at me, hit me. Do something. Stop fucking standing there like I don't exist.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Beautiful Letdown

Niou really fucking hates soba noodles. Hates that the ones people always order come with broth and where the hell do customers think they get the right to yell at him when their food turns up on their doorstep completely upside down from the way they started? What was Niou supposed to do, _walk_ his bike to people's houses? Assholes.

Turning his hat backwards (ugly dumb orange piece of shit, Niou thinks he should threaten employee abuse for being forced to wear it), he kicks his bike stand down and takes the last delivery of the night out of the flimsy plastic basket attached to the side of his bike.

He walks up the pathway in large strides and rings the doorbell twice, then squints at the order under the dull yellow glow of the porch light. Goddammit, more soba noodles. The world hates him.

The front door opens and better light floods the space in front of his feet. "Hey, I got an order for," Niou looks up. He nearly chokes.

"…Y-yagyuu."

\---

Harsh breaths graze his ear and Niou grunts, pressing his forehead against the cold metal of the lockers, grimacing.

"Fuck, Yagyuu," he groans, reaching back to dig his nails into Yagyuu's waist in a tight grip. "Trying to pummel me through the wall or something?"

Yagyuu's answer is another rough thrust, making Niou hiss, the pained sound cut off when he bites down on his lip. Exchange one for the other. Then teeth scrape against the curve between Niou's neck and shoulder and he arches his back, a strangled gasp caught in his throat. It's almost a little needy, but Niou's not the type to think like that.

There's something foreign about Yagyuu this afternoon and Niou can feel it through the bruises just under his collarbone as well as the ones pressed into his hips.

A grunt is exhaled between his shoulder blades and Niou echoes it with a sharp inhale as Yagyuu snaps his hips _hard_.

Niou waits until Yagyuu isn't breathing so heavy anymore before crooking his head back, smirking. "You're a real sociable bastard today, aren't you?" Yagyuu glares at him and when he sees himself reflected in a sharp gaze rather than cold, thin glass, Niou can only groan in frustration. " _Yagyuu_ , you had your turn. Now fucking make me come already."

Yagyuu pulls out with barely even a pause and Niou face contorts at the sudden burn. Fucking bastard. But the hands on his hips spin him around roughly and slam him against the lockers again, and before Niou can complain even more, his cock is just _swallowed_.

" _Y_ \--"

Niou throws his head back on the first gasp, bangs his fist against the lockers on the second, and happily gives up all dignity on the third.

When he's able to open his eyes again, Niou glances down and just about comes again when he sees Yagyuu wiping his mouth with the back of his hand like some prostitute on the street would do for 1500 yen.

"I'm going to take the scholarship to study in Boston."

Niou does something like a double-take with pants still around his ankles and in his head he hears _just so you know, I've got this weird itch down there, but it's probably nothing – and I prefer cash._

"What? What fucking scholarship?"

Yagyuu tucks his shirt in neatly, zips up his pants without so much a sound. He walks over to the mirror to check his collar, as if to fold away evidence of bruised lips and lines in his skin made by blunt nails – all of which don't exist. "Harvard's desperate for diversity to keep their good reviews, so they gave me a free ride," he says to his reflection, then catches the eye of Niou's body double and shrugs. "I'm taking it."

Niou pulls up his pants with none of the lazy grace Yagyuu possesses. He leaves his pants and belt undone, a priority for later. Not being half-naked is good enough for now. "What the fuck is a Harvard?" he spits. "Jesus fucking Christ, Yagyuu, you don't fucking break news like this after you fuck someone against a locker instead of going to class."

Turning around, Yagyuu slips on his glasses and in Niou's brain, a switch flicks at the same time because to talk to this Yagyuu is an entirely different thing from talking with the other.

"You sound like a girl." You sound like a girlfriend who pretends our conversations are about getting initials engraved into our custom-made engagement rings and getting married on a beach with white sand that blinds and burns.

This is all Yagyuu has ever been really, parts and fakes, and Niou still doesn't know if he's ever held onto anything real about Yagyuu for as long as he's known him.

He doesn't answer right away, too busy trying to stab a new hole into his belt then grabbing his jacket. But when he does, he makes sure he's in Yagyuu's face, that when he talks, Yagyuu's glasses get covered with his words. "And you're an asshole."

Outside, past the tennis courts, the bus stop, his house, Niou walks until his knees feel like they're filled with pins. He reaches the street courts a few blocks down from his home and kicks at the fencing, then leans against it and digs his knees in, thinking if he shatters his kneecaps, maybe it'll all feel better.

Fucking Yagyuu.

\---

Niou lights a cigarette and resolutely does not look at Yagyuu standing not two feet away from him. Bastard has a wife but Niou's a little comforted by the fact that that possession hasn't removed the stick up Yagyuu's ass.

Shit, he wasn't supposed to look.

"Smoking's damaging towards your health."

Niou gives (another) sidelong glance and snorts. "Thanks, mother. Wonder who wears the pants in your relationship."

Yagyuu sighs inaudibly and slips a hand into the pocket of his pressed slacks. "The hideousness of your hat prevented me from realizing your real age."

In response, Niou narrows his eyes and takes a longer drag, holds it, then blows it not-so-subtlety into Yagyuu's face. "Hey, if you die from lung cancer, I promise I'll fuck your wife just like how you do it. It's been a while, but I think I remember the basics. Do it rough and then tell her, baby, thanks for all the good times, but it ain't gonna work out between us no more."

As expected, no reaction from Yagyuu, heartless bastard of the millennium.

It takes a second for Niou to realize that his heart is beating _yell at me, hit me. Do something. Stop fucking standing there like I don't exist._

"Go home, Niou."

"What if I don't have one?"

It's the first time during the entire conversation that Yagyuu gives any sign that he's paying attention to Niou and the second he has eye contact, Niou drops his cigarette butt in between Yagyuu's feet and smirks as he turns away and walks back to his bike.

Even though he got the last word in, Niou doesn't feel all that victorious.

Somehow, he feels like he got slapped in the face instead.

\---

 _1364 Ashiba -_

God fucking dammit. Fuck no.

Niou crumples the order in his hand, and then contemplates the insane idea of eating the paper afterwards.

 _Yagyuu,_ he thinks. _You are such a son of a bitch._

\---

"Niou-kun." Shut up. "This is Junko. My wife." Shut the fuck up.

"Nice to meet you, Niou-san."

Niou slouches against the doorframe and doesn't try much to make eye contact. "Yeah, same to you."

He watches Yagyuu whisper something into Junko's ear and tries to keep his gag reflex down; wonders if Yagyuu would find cause for murder if he blurted out right then and there all the times he and Yagyuu have fucked and ask how Yagyuu's pussyeating ability compares to his cocksucking one.

Probably would.

Junko disappears back into the house and Niou straightens again, pushing hair from his eyes. "Once an asshole, always an asshole, huh?" he comments, hands slipping into his pockets.

Yagyuu looks back at him blankly and Niou thinks about how Yagyuu's the only person he knows who still wears glasses.

"Hey," Niou says over his shoulder, turning around and hopping down the steps. "Order your damn noodles from somewhere else. I need this job, okay. Don't make me quit it."

"Quit this weekend."

Niou stops in the middle of the path. "Fuck off, Yagyuu," he says without looking.

"Don't you want to ruin my marriage?"

Niou pivots around slowly and regards Yagyuu with a look of disbelief. "Jesus Christ," he breathes when he sees that Yagyuu still has that blank look on him.

Yagyuu lifts a hand and pushes his glasses up. "You still like the beach, don't you. Niou-kun?"

\---

Niou shows up on a Friday morning, before the sun is even up, at Yagyuu's house, freshly unemployed and with half his life packed in a tiny duffel bag.

Yagyuu takes them straight to the car and Niou whistles when he sees it – blackest black he's ever seen and rides so low it nearly scrapes the ground.

A car that's more suited for Niou than it is for Yagyuu.

"You tell her where we're going?" Niou asks, slipping into the passenger seat and sighing at the way it fits against him.

"I left a note," Yagyuu replies blandly, clicking his seatbelt in place and reaching for the ignition button.

Flying forward, Niou slaps Yagyuu's hand away and pushes it himself without asking. The engine roars then quiets to a hum beneath their feet and Niou reclines in his seat contently. "You're the worst husband I've ever seen."

"Never get married if you want to keep it that way."

\---

Niou isn't sure what he's supposed to expect, that maybe Yagyuu will just leave him on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere.

Except Yagyuu's the one that's been ordering soba noodles the past four weeks in a row, always during the time when Niou's on the delivery shift.

The first thing he finds is that the beach house is real. Real and huge and Niou wonders just how bored Yagyuu is nowadays.

"Big spender," he comments, holding a hand up against the sun and squinting up at the second floor.

"Gift from Junko's parents."

Niou gives Yagyuu a sidelong glance and reminds himself that he has no reason to be feeling any guilt. Cheating on his wife with another guy at the beach house her parents bought for them? Definitely all Yagyuu's idea.

\---

For a house with five bazillion rooms and three balconies, Niou finds it extremely stupid that there's only one bed.

"I'll go sleep in the bathtub," he announces, turning on his heel after he sufficiently stares in disbelief at the king size bed.

"Don't be stupid," Yagyuu mutters, loosening his tie. "Do you suddenly have an embarrassing tattoo you're afraid I'll laugh at?"

Niou doesn't answer right away. He's too busy looking at the lack of tattoos on Yagyuu's body as the other strips nonchalantly. When he does though, what comes out of his mouth is less words and more a strangled of noise of distress because Yagyuu's going for his boxers too.

Pausing with his thumbs hooked over the waistband, Yagyuu blinks at Niou. Niou wants to reach over and tear those glasses off and smash them into the wall. He thinks about it seriously when Yagyuu unexpectedly climbs onto the mattress and walks on his knees towards Niou.

The kiss comes without warning and is hot and hard and leaves Niou breathless almost right away. Yagyuu's blunt nails dig into the skin on the back of his neck and Niou can only think, _deeper_.

"What are you staring at?" Yagyuu says belatedly, tugging on Niou's bottom lip none-so-gently. "You wanted the sex, didn't you?"

Niou nods quickly before pulling Yagyuu back in, kissing him hotter, harder. They both just miss the sex.

Tomorrow he'll think about how they end up doing nothing but kiss for an entire hour and a half.

\---

When tomorrow arrives, Niou opens his eyes and discovers what it feels like to wake up next to Yagyuu, something he never did in high school because both were too stupid to think that anything could be more than 'just sex'.

He gets out of bed and hides in the bathroom until Yagyuu wakes too, and knocks on the door for Niou to hurry the fuck up.

\---

Niou knows how to cook, a necessary skill in order to be poor and alone, but he doesn't tell Yagyuu. He feigns ignorance and lets the other go out to buy breakfast instead because cooking them both even just miso soup would feel too domestic for him to ignore.

They're not the ones married. Niou's the other man.

\---

Niou discovers the wine cellar in the basement.

His knowledge of wines is as good now as it was when he was in high school. In other words, none at all, so Niou grabs five bottles at random – the most he can carry at one time.

Upstairs, Yagyuu refuses to tell him whether or not they're expensive wines so Niou just pours a glass and downs it all in one go, declaring afterwards that Yagyuu's a total cheapass.

But thirty minutes and a bottle and a half later Niou is obsessed with how Yagyuu's glasses reflect his face back to him and if he crosses his eyes, that he can produce even more copies of himself.

Yagyuu's patience is still as short as Niou remembers and he takes his glasses off, holding them to the side as he tells Niou from his trapped position on the couch to "get off and quit digging your elbow into my side."

Despite being complete smashed, Niou's still lucid enough to ignore Yagyuu completely and latches his mouth to Yagyuu's throat instead. He twists an arm out from between their chests and gropes blindly for Yagyuu's outstretched hand. When his palm hits thin, folded metal, he starts sucking slow but hard, working hard to distract Yagyuu enough that he can wrestle those damn offending glasses away and toss them across the room.

The mark he produces is an angry red, in a place purposely high so that while Yagyuu's co-workers might just congratulate him for having a wife that still puts out, the wife will realize exactly how much (little) she means to Yagyuu. Niou feels minimal satisfaction.

Bracing himself, Niou hovers over Yagyuu and stares down at him unrelenting, sees Yagyuu staring calmly right back at him, no tiny Niou's between them and the rush of sobriety Niou gets is almost violent.

There's a question that Niou's been ignoring for years, somewhere between his head and his heart. It's a question that's vulnerable and uncertain and makes Niou feel so completely unlike himself that he's never hated anything else more. But now this question has crept into his throat, is climbing higher and higher with each breath and even the draw of maybe finally receiving an answer isn't enough to make him want to ask it.

"I hate you, Yagyuu," he lies.

Yagyuu just pulls Niou's head down to his throat again and says, "Harder. I can't feel it yet."

\---

They leave before dawn again and it's then that they finally actually see the beach. Niou sits on the hood of Yagyuu's car and squints out at where he thinks the horizon is. He wonders how long it would take to swim there.

The view is blocked when Yagyuu steps in front of him and presses the car keys against Niou's chest. Niou's face quickly brightens with childish glee and he slides off with a whoop and goes for the driver's side.

Niou never hits the button to unlock the doors. Instead, he blurts out "let's stay", looking over the roof of the car to stare at the mark on Yagyuu's throat, distinct when he can barely see anything else at all.

"Niou-kun. I didn't ask for any days off."

"Who cares?" Niou grins. "Quit." He can't tell what kind of face Yagyuu is making and is too impatient to find out, walks to the trunk instead and pops it open. "I feel like swimming today."

He's just pulled out his bag when the trunk is suddenly slammed shut again and. Well, fuck. Now that Yagyuu's being up close and personal, Niou can tell that the previously unknown expression is 'pissed off'.

"We're leaving," Yagyuu says, clipped. He reaches to take the keys back but Niou finds it hard to let go of them.

"Yagyuu. You told me to quit and I quit just like that."

Yagyuu forces the keys from Niou, making Niou's palm burn as the teeth scratch against his skin. "Get in the car."

But instead Niou's trailing Yagyuu to the driver's side and shoving him up against the door, pushing Yagyuu's shoulders back against where the door curves into the roof. Yagyuu's wince almost makes Niou want to push harder, see just how much of a reaction he can get.

"How many times should I expect you to completely fuck up my life? Because I think you owe me at least a number if you're going to keep doing it."

"Get the fuck off me."

"No."

Later, Niou might think about how he deserved Yagyuu's punch but now, he's only concerned about how to fit ten years worth of anger into one fistfight.

"You don't even love her, Yagyuu," he says loudly, shoving Yagyuu against the car again and punches him in the stomach. He draws his fist back and stares at Yagyuu hard and cold. "What the fuck does she have that I don't."

"She got pregnant."

Niou's fist slams into the car. The alarm goes off.

They stand there in the dark, Niou staring at Yagyuu in disbelief while Yagyuu stares resolutely over Niou's shoulder. A neighbor's light goes on and someone shouts at them. Yagyuu presses the button to turn the alarm off.

"Let's go home, Niou," Yagyuu mutters, and this time when he lifts a hand to Niou's shoulder, Niou steps away easily. Resigned.

Picking up his discarded bag, Niou walks around the car and gets in silently. He doesn't register Yagyuu getting in after, or the car turning on, or much of anything at all until they're far from the beach house and Yagyuu reaches over and takes his hand.

"I hate you, Yagyuu."

"Yeah, I know."

Yagyuu floors it and the force throws Niou's head back against the headrest. He licks the cut on his lip and closes his eyes, pretends the sting is in his mouth, not behind his eyelids, and laughs.

The sun finally rises, heat sticking to the horizon in wisps as if it doesn't want to let go of night; lovers that can touch by means of fingertips and nothing more, but unable to part, kept together by the world. Niou peeks out at the warmth of the first morning light on his skin and opens his eyes to the Yagyuu of right now, silhouetted by fire, consuming and raw and bitter.

It is the most beautiful thing Niou will ever see.


End file.
